d, if it
was in his power to assist him, was punished as rigorously as the
assassin:(329) but if the unfortunate person could not be succoured, the
offender was at least to be impeached; and penalties were decreed for any
neglect of this kind. Thus the subjects were a guard and protection to one
another; and the whole body of the community united against the designs of
the bad.

No man was allowed to be useless to the state;(330) but every one was
obliged to enter his name and place of abode in a public register, that
remained in the hands of the magistrate, and to describe his profession,
and his means of support. If he gave a false account of himself, he was
immediately put to death.

To prevent borrowing of money, the parent of sloth, frauds, and chicane,
king Asychis made a very judicious law.(331) The wisest and best regulated
states, as Athens and Rome, ever found insuperable difficulties, in
contriving a just medium, to restrain, on one hand, the cruelty of the
creditor in the exaction of his loan; and on the other, the knavery of the
debtor, who refused or neglected to pay his debts. Now Egypt took a wise
course on this occasion; and, without doing any injury to the personal
liberty of its inhabitants, or ruining their families, pursued the debtor
with incessant fears of infamy in case he were dishonest. No man was
permitted to borrow money without pawning to the creditor the body of his
father, which every Egyptian embalmed with great care; and kept
reverentially in his house, (as will be observed in the sequel,) and
therefore might be easily moved from one place to another. But it was
equally impious and infamous not to redeem soon so precious a pledge; and
he who died without having discharged this duty, was deprived of the
customary honours paid to the dead.(332)

Diodorus remarks an error committed by some of the Grecian
legislators.(333) They forbid, for instance, the taking away (to satisfy
debts) the horses, ploughs, and other implements of husbandry employed by
peasants; judging it inhuman to reduce, by this security, these poor men
to an impossibility of discharging their debts, and getting their bread:
but, at the same time, they permitted the creditor to imprison the
peasants themselves, who alone were capable of using these implements,
which exposed them to the same inconveniences, and at the same time
deprived the government of persons who belong, and are necessary, to it;
who labour for the pub